Francis Chan's Healing Teachings: Separating Fact from Fiction

Francis Chan's involvement with the Last Reformation Movement and its teachings on healing

The difference between real and fake miracles

The dangers of 'kick-starting faith' and the potential for spiritual harm

The importance of discerning between true and false teachings

There are several different things I wish to comment on today. I'm going to talk about Francis Chan, about the Last Reformation, about the Pentecostal Movement, and of course, about the teachings of Jesus, which as most of you know is my real passion and my real concern. Along the way, there'll be a reference to John Piper, and maybe a word or two about Calvinism and dispensationalism. But I want to start by saying I am not jealous of Francis Chan. Well, maybe a little bit. I mean, I wish I could gesticulate like he does, and he sure does have a great sense of humor. But I don't think jealousy is the motivation behind all the things that I've been saying about him over the past few months. On the contrary, he really excited me the first time I heard him preach. And, from time to time, I've heard him saying more exciting things. Exciting in the sense that he seemed to be prepared to step outside the box. And in the sense that he seemed to want to do things according to God's plan. Even though it took me a little while to work out that his idea of God's plan doesn't really allow much room for literal obedience to Jesus. probably based on Calvinist and predestination-ist influences. But those kinds of theological issues are often very hard to nail down, and I wouldn't be surprised if Francis himself doesn't really know where he stands on those things. Today, however, what Francis has done to catch my attention is that he has behaved in almost exactly the same way I did when I first became involved in Pentecostalism, more than 50 years ago. Of course, I was barely out of my teens then, whereas Francis is 50 years old now, and so I would think that he should know better. Still, there is some kind of naive, childlike faith in some of what I've seen him do, and which I will refer to in this video. Nevertheless, until Francis can recognize the error and what he is doing, he could be headed down an extremely dangerous path spiritually. So, here's the background. Earlier last year, Francis was involved in a panel discussion with John Piper, Miguel Nunez, Sam Storm, and Jason Meyer. Much of it centered around miraculous healings, and what each of them thought about this. At one point, one of them says, we're all Calvinists. Now, that's a hint as to the real basis of unity on that panel, with one possible exception of Francis. I got the feeling that none of the panel members was Pentecostal even though they spoke about things like speaking in tongues and receiving a gift of healing as being quite normal in modern-day Christianity. This non-Pentecostal emphasis on the miraculous appears to be a new movement amongst some Calvinists. They don't endorse Pentecostalism as such, but neither do they speak out against it as used to happen so much in Baptist churches in particular, in the last century. Now, Francis makes it clear that he's new to this whole healing thing, and this new wave of Pentecostalism. This is new to me, and I'm not 100% sure of this, I just got to tell you... He probably should have stopped right there and kept his mouth shut. Maybe learn from these other preachers who had a little more experience than him. In the case of Nunez in particular, I think Francis could have picked up some very good homespun wisdom. Nevertheless, from information that I've received elsewhere, it seems that the Last Reformation Movement, led by Torben Sundergaard has been working quite heavily on Francis, trying to get him into their fold. And their fold does not overlap well with the theology of the rest of the panelists. You can learn more about the Last Reformation Movement in my video called The Last Reformation on this channel. It's in the playlist on other Christians, or you can click on the link that appears on your screen now. During the panel discussion, Chan comments that representatives of that movement had visited his little church the previous weekend. Chan was quite impressed. He said that they had healed at least five of his members, people whom he knew and trusted. He gave a detailed description of how at least one of the healings worked And I would like viewers to take careful note of this. The wife of one of the pastors had a broken toe. It was very painful. So she asked for prayer. And we'll let Francis take it from there. And so that group prayed in faith. And they would ask her, and this is new to me. What's the pain level? You don't have to be nice. Just say it. Is this a little better? If it was a 10, maybe 8? Let's pray again. Again? You know, like, that's pretty good. Let's just say, no, let's go again. Nothing. You know, well, maybe a seven. Oh, it feels better. Now it's just a little bit. And hey, don't be nice. Just be honest. We're not doing the healing. God is. And it got all the way down to where she says, you know what? It's just this little sharp pain now. This is crazy. It's just this little sharp pain. I would say it went from a 10 to a two. And they're like, let's keep praying, keep praying, keep praying. This is definitely Last Reformation's style. You can be quite certain the broken toe was never healed. They teach their people not to even try to really heal anyone, even though their slogan is the word real. Strange, isn't it? Real, real, real, but still almost openly admitting it's not real, at least when it comes to healing. It's just pain relief. It can be pain from a blister on your heel, a sore muscle, a stiff neck, or in this case, the woman who said it hurt to put a shoe on. They call this pain relief thing, kick-starting faith. Tormund admits that he himself would never go near a hospital with his teaching, because he doesn't know how to heal anyone who really needs a miracle. But he does have a lot of success with getting people to report that the pain has decreased, or sometimes even disappeared. So, five of Francis Chan's members presumably reported that pain of one sort or another went away when they were prayed for. I'm going into details about this because it's something that has often been the trademark of Pentecostalism. Except that Sundergaard has put a different spin on it, kick-starting faith as he calls it. Not real faith for miracles, but a little gimmick that will hopefully kick-start real faith in someone else. The reason I say that pain relief is not a real miracle is because you can have a throbbing headache one minute and then some slight distraction suddenly takes your attention right away from the pain and it's gone. It may come back, but it may not too. But does that make you a miracle worker? I don't think so. And then the Last Reformation has added something from old-fashioned Pentecostalism as well. It used to be kind of an inside joke when confronted by a zealous Pentecostal. Do you have a cold? Don't mention it. Do you have a disability? Keep it quiet. Do you have a chronic disease? Never say a word about it. Why? Well, because you will find yourself stuck in a corner with someone laying hands on you and claiming that you're going to be healed. Now, if that was the case, no problem. But if, after they have prayed, you say that you've not been healed, they will subtly imply it was your lack of faith that caused you not to be healed. So there no way out of it Either you verify that they healed you as in claiming that you been healed whether you have or not or you leave under a cloud as having been a doubter Now, I wonder how much this pastor's wife was feeling like that, about her broken toe. Were they going to stay there all night until she loudly proclaimed that the pain was all gone? Can you see why the Bible would call this a lying sign, or lying wonder? If you tell the lie, praise God my broken back is healed, the healer will walk away, possibly even convince himself that it really happened. But you will go away feeling like a fool, for having walked into a situation where you were almost certain to lose, one way or the other. Either you tell the truth, you weren't healed, and you feel condemned for not having enough faith, or you tell a lie, and you feel condemned for having done that. Now, let me qualify this by saying that sometimes people really do get healed. I believe in miracles, absolutely. I just don't believe in miracles that require this kind of parlor magic, especially if we're only talking about pain relief. What the New Reformationists do is called the placebo effect in medical and scientific circles. New Age charlatans do variations of it all the time. They talk it up about them having great psychic powers, and then they demonstrate their supernatural power by ordering pain to go away, and some people get quite excited because it goes away. I would be so bold as to say that the devil himself loves this kind of deception, no matter what name it's done in. To the extent that he can fake a miracle, he'll even help to make the pain go away, just to add to the drama. We've talked about how the deception targets pain and not genuine conditions that would require a miracle to disappear. We've discussed how pressure is put on the person with the element to pretend they've been healed when they have not. Now I want to address a third aspect of the whole lying signs and wonders thing. The devil wants to put all the emphasis on a carnal human being. I believe it's one big reason why Jesus said that miracles as a whole are the domain of an evil and adulterous generation. You would not believe the amount of tension that arises within Pentecostal circles whenever someone finally gets healed, or at least claims to have been healed. The tension is over exactly whose prayer tipped the scales and caused God to jump into action. In the right circumstances, the fakers themselves might even contribute to your delusion of grandeur by telling you, I think it was your prayer that did it. Once again, what are they doing? As Torben would put it, well, they're just kick-starting faith, but it's misplaced faith. Faith in your own deluded ability to heal. Using flattery, they create faith in what may in fact be absolutely nothing. Hey, it was my prayer that did it. I have this great gift. Praise God. Thank you, Jesus. That's what I've always wanted. This is Ms. Francis finishes off the story about the sore toe. And I just was prompted to be the one, after they prayed for a while, to get on my knees at her feet and hold her toe and pray. And in my mind, I'm just saying, Lord, this is not out loud. Lord, I don't want her leaving here going, yeah, it feels better. God, make her scream. Make her just to where she can't contain like you moved. It is not emotion, power of the Holy Spirit. And when she just started going, no, no, look at this. Look at this, you know, and just praising God and tears coming down her face. And then two of the guys said, we had talked before you got on your face. And we both heard from the Lord. That last two degrees of pain is going to come from Francis. Get that faith in him. This is all new to me. Like I said earlier, if it's all new, it would have been better if Francis had just said nothing and talked about this with his fellow panelists privately, and not tried to take over the whole show as he did in this video. But sadly, it's not his style. And that's where I want to say more about the teachings of Jesus. As you know, Francis has intimated in a couple of sermons that he thinks we should listen to Jesus and even obey Jesus. That's what I like most about him. Unfortunately, I've so far not been able to find him actually teaching anybody to literally obey anything specific that Jesus taught. Nor have I seen Francis himself putting into practice the teachings of Jesus in accord with what we read in the four Gospels. All those men on the stage would have probably represented several decades a full-time study of the Bible. Between them, they would have read through the Bible more than a hundred times. So, you know that somewhere along the line, they would have each come across a little document called The Sermon on the Mount. Right? It's widely praised as the ultimate condensation of everything that Jesus taught. It takes less than 10 minutes to read from start to finish. Now, in it, Jesus says, If you pray, do not do like the hypocrites who pray out loud in the synagogues to be heard of men. Do you hear that? Do not do like the hypocrites do. What do the hypocrites do? They pray out loud in front of their various religious congregations. That's what Jesus said. There may be some arguable exceptions, but that's the way he said it in the Sermon on the Mount. Do not do like this. It is what hypocrites do. They pray out loud, to be heard by the rest of the congregation. Now, back to the quote from Jesus. But when you pray...listen to this now. This is the Son of God telling us how to pray. When you pray, enter into your closet and pray in secret, and your heavenly Father who hears in secret will reward you openly. Again, we could argue over whether it needs to literally be a closet, or whether he just means to pray silently, in your head, secretly like Francis said he did when he was holding the woman's toe. Of course, after he announced to the world that he had prayed something secretly, it was no longer secret, was it? I've noticed this. In sermon after sermon, Francis tells his audience about how he was praying for this, or praying for that. If he'll listen, it'll be mentioned almost every time he preaches, letting us know something about his prayer life. Now here's how he introduced his story about the healing in the video we're talking about at the moment. Well, on Saturday, after the all-night prayer, all day, you know, that 13, 14 hours of prayer... I know preachers all over the world do it. They start their sermons with some kind of prayer, asking God to be present and to speak to them. Something along these lines. Before we get started, would you bow your heads in prayer? Father, we're... But here's how Francis does it. So would you join with me as I pray right now I pray that you would open the eyes of anyone who listening that doesn get you Lord that you would just pour your mercy out, your grace on them. I mean, I feel embarrassed for him. Doesn't he know that he's thumbing his nose in the face of Jesus when he does that? Doesn't he know that Jesus said that this is what hypocrites do? I mean, how far can we go excusing that kind of behavior? Try to tell ourselves that he doesn't know better, that he's never read it. Believe me, brothers and sisters, he knows. He's read the Sermon on the Mount. Not like the rest of us who let our pastors read it for us. But the Bible says that in the last days, the devil will send people strong delusion. If you don't listen to Jesus, you will soon start believing that you can make the rules. And you can make the miracles happen too. You can tell God what to do, and just because you think it would be really nice for God to do something well, he'll just do it. And that's what happened. Apparently, the night before, Francis had prayed for Miguel Nunez, the preacher from Santa Domingo because he had a bad back and he was in a lot of pain. Nunez had not jumped up and started shouting that he had been healed And so Francis started thinking. I know, because this is the kind of thing that went through my head when I first encountered this kind of stuff 50 years ago. And I know it because of things Francis says in the video as well. You start thinking, hmm, a miracle right now would really knock the socks off all the people who see it. And then they would listen to everything else I have to say. This is exactly what my ministry needs. Now, these other guys may not have the kind of faith that I have, so probably God's just waiting for me to show how much faith I have by just standing up and putting my neck on the line. I'll tell them I'm going to pray for a miracle, and God will be impressed by faith and courage, and he'll give me what I'm asking for. Then, while you're thinking like that, you convince yourself that you actually have been prompted by the Holy Spirit to do this. It wasn't my idea. It was God's idea. I need to act on that prompt. If I open my mouth and act on that prompt right now, something great is going to happen. Listen. I just... I want to pray for you, Miguel. You're back. I, you know, I just think, what if right now, like God just heals Miguel, like through our prayer right here? That's a way to close a conference like this. You know, like just in faith, if we could just lay hands on Miguel and pray for a healing of his back. He was telling me about his pain yesterday, and I started praying for him. He told me, oh, man, it's better. I got to sleep last night. And I'm like, man, I want to pray until this thing is just done, you know, just a complete healing. And I just feel prompted, and I don't want to quench the spirit. So I'm interrupting. See, Francis knows how to work a crowd. He got them all on side Well, all those other ministers were left speechless. Good old impulsive Francis. But let's look at a verse which I've found helpful over the years. It's from 1 Timothy 5.22. It says, lay hands suddenly on no man. Some people think it's talking about not hitting people, but hey, suddenly or not, don't hit people at all. But laying hands on people in the New Testament usually refers to praying for someone to receive something special from God, like healing, or a special anointing of the Holy Spirit, or maybe you're going to cast out a devil, that sort of thing. The lesson I get from that verse is that we need to take time, get to know the background to the situation, before we jump in and start acting on what we think would be the best way to impress people. Pray for wisdom. Listen humbly to what God is saying. Don't just jump in based on your own impulse and emotions. But like I said before, this was all new to Francis. Still, new or not, he stands up and takes over the stage, announcing to the audience what he would like to see happen, as though others of us would not like to see that happen as well. Here's what I'd like. I would love to just pray with absolute faith. Just say, God, take away any doubt, any of that unbelief in me. And would you guys join me and everyone just join me in this belief that God's in this room right now. Like, he's right here. He hears everything. He can do anything. I mean, this is real now. Real power and real love. Note that word, real. I think you've been steeped in it before joining the panel. But is it real? Now, what I've usually experienced in smaller type Pentecostal gatherings, and I admit my experience is fairly limited in terms of formal religious organizations, is that no one person puts on a show when they're praying for someone to be healed. They all just gather around someone for whom they're praying, and they all unite in prayer, either praying silently or praying out loud all at once. It's not about one person performing a miracle. It's united prayer by all of the elders. But, like I said, this is all new to Francis, so he sets it up differently, and he explains to God about what it is that he wants. Lord, we talk about gifts of miracle, gifts of healings. And God, right now, we would just love that, Lord. I'm not thinking, am I praying right? God, I just want to see it. I really want to see it. I want my brother just going, no way. I want to hear reports of this later where he's just going, it was insane. It was just over, way beyond. I didn't even dream of this. I didn't know I could feel this good, Lord. Things that you do, I read about it in scripture, and it doesn't make sense that it ended to me. Lord, this is your Holy Spirit. Please, God, please, Father. Please, Father, I know you love Miguel. Just asking for your grace, Lord. You've done so many things that we just marvel at. I want to see it, Lord. I want to see more of this, Lord. After Francis finished praying, there was this really awkward silence as everyone moved back to their seats. No one knew what to say, and finally, Miguel himself speaks. He says nothing about the prayer or about his medical condition at all. Francis' prayer is the huge elephant in the room, for which no one has an answer. Instead, Miguel assures us that miracles do happen. happen that in fact just last week in his church in Santo Domingo someone was healed. Then after a bit more pause, one of the others, Sam Storm I think, shares a similar testimony about someone who was healed a year or so ago in his church. Finally, four and a half minutes after he finished praying, Francis asks the obvious. Do you...I just...do you feel...don't...don't feel pressure? No, seriously, I think this is important to say, like, hey, you don't want to feel like, oh, man, I'm going to disappoint everyone if I'm not healed, as though we were doing something. It's the sovereign will of God having made that caveat. You know, how do you feel? And here's where Francis finds out what he would have learned back at the start if only he had taken a second or two to listen to Miguel before he laid hands on them. I came in better today. Yeah. So I wasn't really feeling pain when I came in. Francis comes back immediately with something that he later says was a joke. But it so close to what actually happened That is a preoccupation with his own ego that the humor is at least partially lost I might have done it yesterday by myself without these guys You know I'm joking about that. From that, the panel is able to get into some serious discussion about how they deal with the fact that most people for whom they pray are not healed. No one actually says most, but there's enough references to just how rare these miracles are to make that pretty clear. But here's where I was quite shocked at something John Piper said. The question is, how do you prepare people for the possibility well, in fact, I would say, how do you prepare them for the very strong likelihood that they will not be miraculously healed? Piper comes right out and says it will destroy faith if we are honest about how likely it is that God will not heal, or if we mention it at all. I feel this is yet another plank in the whole lying signs and wonder phenomena that has happened in the church over the past century, and which men like Torben Sondergaard are likely to extend into the rest of this century. Here's John Piper's defense for misleading people about the strong possibility that God will not heal them. Note that he talks about how we should not tell God that he might not heal. What he's getting at is that you pray in front of the person, and so he's really saying don't tell the person that they might not be healed. We all believe here God can heal and that he doesn't always heal. We all believe that. Therefore, when you get together, you don't need to inform God that we know you don't heal sometimes. Because it's always prefacing your prayer with, now we understand, you know, we're all Calvinists here and we believe in the sovereignty of God. You just don't need to do that because the church is well taught. You just start asking God to do it. And the second thing I would say, so that's saying you do not have to say out loud, you may not heal here. You know, let's all prepare ourselves to fail here in our faith because we know theologically that we might. I was greatly encouraged by the fact that Miguel stood up to this. He stated quite rightly that it is not failure for God to not heal, nor is it honest to fake more faith than we really have. This is what Miguel said. I went to the funeral home to visit a mom who had lost her son. About 10 minutes later, a lady came in. And the first thing that came out of the mom was, liar, liar, liar. You told me that my son was healed. There he is, dead. Now what do you have to say? So there are all kinds of people declaring people healed who have never been healed. I hope the viewers can see that I'm not talking about personalities here, nor am I wishing to sabotage anyone's ministry. But I think we do need to see that this whole new emphasis on miracles, many of which are absolutely fake is going to do a lot of damage to the truth of what Jesus taught. The last Reformation movement is transparently dishonest with all this talk about kick-starting faith and miracles which simply are not happening. They are anything but real. And I'm deeply concerned for Francis in particular, being sucked in by it because he has the capacity to pass on such lies to those who trust in him more than they trust in Jesus. What I keep coming back to is that the church, the entire church, including all these big name preachers is not equipped to dig their way out of the whole Pentecostal morass because they have not submitted themselves to the teachings of Jesus. It is our human reasoning that says if we could just do miracles, we could win the world for God. Listen to what God says to the rich man in hell, in reference to his brothers who were still alive back on earth. They have Moses and the prophets. If they will not believe them, neither will they believe, though one rose from the dead. Or to put it in a New Testament context, we have the teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount and, as if that's not enough, this same guy did rise from the dead. But if we don't believe what Jesus said, then all the miracles in the world are not going to change anything. See, we think it's the world that doesn't have faith. It's our very obsession with miracles that proves we don't have faith. We don't believe God is big enough to reveal himself to people without us telling him what's needed. Someone jumping up and down all over the stage saying, it's real, it's real, it's real! What all these guys appear to have in common is one of the most disgusting of all teachings in the church world today. It's called dispensationalism. The teaching that says the teachings of Jesus are out of date, no longer relevant in today's world. Ask any one of them. Does obedience to the teachings of Jesus have any bearing on your salvation? They'll all say no. It's what they believe and it's what they teach. If you want to be part of their chain, you have to believe that too, or at least say you believe it. They may share what sometimes sounds like great wisdom but when it comes to the even greater truths of the Sermon on the Mount they will all reveal themselves to be spiritual retards. deluded by their own egos. It has been my hope that Francis Chan, who is obviously prepared to swim against the tide will one day decide to do that with the teachings of Jesus. Stand up to the lot of them. Say it like it is. Obey Jesus! Only he is real. Only he is the truth. Only he is the way to life. So, why do pastors and congregations all over the world accept the gagging of Jesus that is happening under dispensationalism? It's because the teachings of the dispensationalists are so much more comfortable than the teachings of Jesus. We are offered false hopes when we could be offered the Rock of Ages, the cornerstone himself. And most disappointing of all, we love to have it that way. Please watch my video, Miracles, in which I make it very clear that I do believe in miracles but only in accordance with the teachings of Jesus. I don't know why there are not more miracles today, but I do think our disobedience has some part in that. But telling lies is not going to produce miracles or revival. Revival will only come when we are broken and honest enough to admit that all of our emotionalism All of our theology has not produced the kind of miracles that happen in Bible times. Then, just walk away from the miracles. Yes, you heard me. Walk away from the miracles and come over here and listen to the miracle worker for a while. This is where real revival is going to come from. You want real? Then listen to him. What I've been trying to say to Francis Chan since my first video about his ministry And it's what I've been trying to say to all the rest of you in one way or another through every video on this channel. Please open your Bibles to the Sermon on the Mount and follow it like you are following a recipe. A recipe for revival, with or without miracles. Follow it. And Jesus says you will not be disappointed. Follow anything else in your house, your church, your ministry, your hope of salvation will crash and great will be the fall of it. Amen.

Playlist coming soon.